Putting It Into Words - The Hunger Games: The Victors
by CaraLee934
Summary: "Music expresses that which cannot be put into words and that which cannot remain silent" ― Victor Hugo
1. Chapter 1

**Okay, so this is the result of a writing exercise I torture myself with every now and then. I pick a playlist, put it on shuffle, and write a drabble/ficlet per song, as long as the song plays, until I have written more than a thousand words.**

**For this edition, the end product of my "Hunger Games: The Victors" playlist.**

**WARNING! Does contain references to what happened to the Victors after their games, as well as spoilers for Mockingjay. **

_**I do not own The Hunger Games, or any characters you recognize.**_

* * *

**Iris – Goo Goo Dolls**

"Finn?" Annie looked around the kitchen. "Are you in here?"

"Over here."

He was in the caddy-corner between the kitchen and dining room, sitting on the window bench, his knees pulled up to his chest, staring at the ocean and the coast of Four. He looked up as she came over and gave her a weak smile.

The phonograph in the other room switched songs.

"Let's dance Finn." Annie said impulsively, reaching out her hands to him. "Please dance with me?"

He gave her a long look before rising and taking her hands. They stood in the kitchen, swaying to the music, holding each other close for a long time before he finally broke down and the tears came.

* * *

**Eye of the Tiger – Survivor **

Chaff scowled at the boy from One that faced him across the stretch of sunbaked rocks. That boy and his spear-thing were all that stood between him and home. Between him and his family.

Seeder stifled a gasp as she heard the footsteps outside her hollow get louder. It seemed a long time before they went away. She chewed another handful of bark. She could do this. She was Eleven, she knew how to starve, how to play the _Hunger_ Games. They couldn't beat her at this.

Mags slipped into the river, her reed clenched tightly in her teeth, a free finger plugging the end. Her underwater cave had been a safe haven as she patched up her wounds, but she was one of the final two now. She couldn't hide any longer. Not if she wanted to go home.

* * *

**Me Against the World – Simple Plan**

Haymitch hunched his shoulders as he hurried down the street towards the Victors' Village. Well, Victor's Village. Quillar Root had been dead for more than thirty years. He heard the jeers from a bunch of Seam kids and couldn't keep the flinch away. He wasn't Twelve anymore, not to them. He was Capitol-made.

He gritted his teeth as he slammed the door and yanked off his boots. Well, let them think that! Let the Capitol think that! But he was Haymitch Abernathy, eighteen years old, Victor of the 50th Hunger Games and he _was_ Twelve. He'd show them. Someday, he'd show them. He'd show them that they couldn't own _all_ of him.

* * *

**Answer – Sarah McLachlan**

Annie drew a deep breath as the train pulled into the station at Four. The train system had been one of the first things rebuilt after the war was over. Beside her, Johanna shot her a glance.

"You okay, Crazy?"

Annie didn't respond. _No, I'm not okay_. She touched her just-beginning-to-show bump gently. She'd wanted to be angry at first, maybe, if there hadn't been a baby, she would have been able to be there and save Finnick.

But there was a baby. And he or she was all she had left of her husband.

She didn't know how to live in this new Games, no selling. No Mags, no Finn.

But she had their baby.

"Annie?"

She looked up.

"I'm Lara. Finnick's brother's wife."

And she had Four and Johanna. It would have to be enough.

* * *

**Eyes Open – Taylor Swift**

_Not a child anymore_.

Cash's words rang in his ears long after she had left the room.

_You're not a child anymore!_

Why was she so angry? He'd won the Games. He'd survived. She should be happy. They'd made history, the first siblings to win. And two years in a row too!

Why did she seem…scared?

Two nights later, after a horrible, horrible evening and several hours spent in the bathroom throwing up, with Cash bringing him water to rinse his mouth after every time, he knew. And Gloss swore that he would never trust anyone except Cash again.

* * *

**Turning – Les Misérables Cast (From the Movie Soundtrack, Extended Edition)**

Mags watched this year's victor be pulled from the arena with a sigh and a quick brush of the tears from her eyes. Poor child had no idea what she was in for.

* * *

**Unwell – Matchbox Twenty**

She wasn't crazy.

Honestly, she wasn't.

Sometimes it just became too much, the memories fighting with the Here and the Now for attention.

So she had to go inside to get away from it all.

But it wasn't even that often anymore. She stayed home, they didn't make her go to the Capitol, not after she'd had her screaming fit and stabbed that man with her fork. They liked their Victors to be perfect, they couldn't show their cracks in the Capitol. They had to be whole.

She couldn't fake it. So she stayed home and fished and wove and cooked most of the meals because all Mags and Finn knew how to cook was standard fishermen's fare.

She stayed with Mags and Finn most of the time because her mamma expected her to be the Annie from Before.

Mags and Finn knew better. They knew she wasn't crazy, but they also knew she wasn't the same.

* * *

**I See Fire – Ed Sheeran – Hobbit Soundtrack, Special Edition**

"So." Haymitch said as he finished outlining the plan and leaned back against the wall he was standing in front of. "Y'all in?"

Chaff was the first to respond. "That's a crazy plan Mitch."

Haymitch shrugged. "Crazy's all we got right now."

Johanna had objections. "So I'm just supposed to throw my own life away for some chit I don't even know?"

"She's one of us Johanna." Cecilia objected right back, but quieter. "She's new, and we don't know her. She ain't even had the full 'Victor Experience', but she's one of us."

"Panem is burning Johanna," Betee chipped in. "Whether you care or not. Either we all burn separately, or we burn together."

"And maybe," Mags says, Finnick translating. "With this plan, more than one can survive."

"Sure," Johanna says after a long pause. "Whatever. Let's burn."

* * *

**This Is War – Thirty Seconds to Mars**

There were so many people.

Beetee and Coin.

Gale, Peeta, and the ghost of Finnick standing beside Annie as she tried to be brave.

Finnick wasn't the only ghost.

Prim, Wiress, Darius and Lavinia the Avox. Mags, Chaff, Seeder, Rue, Marvel, Cato, Clove and Glimmer, Boggs, the Leeg sisters, Messalla, her father.

So many gone.

A warm hand took hers and Katniss forced herself to look over. Peeta was there, Johanna too, gently (for her) bullying Annie into sitting down and having something to eat, Haymitch watching both girls carefully, making sure they're alright. Betee poking at something electronic and Enobaria, sitting off to the side watching them warily, but there. Outside she can hear children shrieking with laughter, free from the shadow of the Games.

They won the war. At an unbelievable, unpayable price, but they won.

* * *

**I really hate to do this, but please people, may I trouble you to review? It is incredibly depressing when a story has favorites and no reviews (though I prefer that to no favorites OR reviews) and I am not joking when I say that even the smallest, saddest reviews, left absolute ages after I actually published the story, make me bounce around my room like the happy little writer that I am.**

**So, in the interests of making my day, and saving Bob from starvation (seriously folks, you should not be able to count a dragon's ribs.) please review!**


	2. Chapter 2

**Dark Horses – Switchfoot**

No one expected many victors from Districts Ten through Twelve. Not at first. So it was a surprise to them all when Ten produced seven and Eleven five. (And Twelve four, eventually.) Those districts, that had never been content to just make the Capitol happy, they weren't _supposed_ to survive.

And yet they did.

Ella called them the "Dark-Horse Districts" the three of them. She said it meant that they came out of nowhere and surprised everyone, surviving more Games than Districts Three, Five, and Six.

Many years later, after a war, Haymitch stood in front of the monument raised for the Victors who had died before or in the rebellion and traced the last names carved into the rose granite.

District Ten – Rufus Boyne, Ella Schafer, Faris Gobind, Jessie Palmer, Todd Graham, Rosabel Birley

District Eleven – Will Trey, Seeder Bell, Chaff Peters, Barley Grano, Honey Granger

District Twelve – Quillar Root

_Dark Horses. That's us. We showed them_.

* * *

**I Was Here - Beyoncé**

Johanna dropped the prop axe to the ground as the door to Seven's apartments closed behind her. Blight and Tollak were at the table, passed out, probably drunk.

She headed straight for her room and locked the door behind her.

She stood for a moment, leaning with her forehead against the wall, panting. The scream built and built and eventually broke free and she smashed her fist into the wall.

_She didn't want this!_

She didn't want to be alone. Unloved and unloving. She wanted someone to remember her! Remember little Hanna, not Johanna the clever killer, the murderer. Just Elias and Jutta's daughter.

She had tried so hard to be worth remembering.

* * *

**You'll Never Walk Alone – Celtic Woman**

After his games, Galen had just wanted to swim out to sea and sink, just so that he wouldn't have to live with this.

Mags hadn't let him. The day after they'd gotten back to Four she'd come over to his house and dragged him out with her, told him she wanted him to teach her how to make fishing nets.

Every day, she came back and bullied him into living and she'd done the same with every other Victor.

Even the Victors from other Districts all knew Mags and most owed her so much, but to the Fours, she was special. She was Galen's best friend, and Liam's. She was a shoulder for Marina to lean on and a confidant for John-Luc. She gently maneuvered Nora and Lagan in each other's direction so they could heal, and now she had adopted the babies as if they were her own grandchildren. First Finnick and now Annie.

She never let a Victor try and make it alone. She was there whether you liked it or not.

* * *

**Demons – Imagine Dragons**

They never talked about it in the Districts. It was something that was left in the Capitol. That didn't mean the scars didn't come home with them.

The Games, the aftermath, and what came after that…No matter how hard they tried, it stuck around. The Capitol didn't let them forget.

And they kept going back, year after year, because if they didn't…First their families, then their friends, then their Districts would feel the repercussions. And none of them could allow that.

They did it for them.

Johanna took the slurs cast at her to protect her home, Finnick smiled and laughed and made pretty eyes at capitolites so that his brother's family would be safe.

Cashmere and Gloss never told who they were protecting, but Sheen had once mentioned a little sister, a child with a bright smile and a mind that wasn't all there.

Haymitch…No one had ever asked, but they could guess.

And then they would go home, and shoulder again the burden that came from being thought of as no longer trustworthy. No longer belonging to the District. (At least Two didn't have that. Victors were honored there.) For so many of them, even their families didn't acknowledge them anymore.

They did it for them anyway.

* * *

**Bullpen – Dessa**

Cashmere glared at the gown she was supposed to wear to the gala tonight.

Did they so easily forget the way she had snapped the neck of a boy twice her size that they now dressed her up like some fashion doll?

How could they forget?

She drew a deep breath and slipped into the gown. Her prep team would be coming back in a moment to finish her hair, they'd been called away by her stylist to come see some new idea he'd had.

The Capitol had done this. They had made her a killer, they had made her everything after.

She would play the part. But she was no fainting flower.

* * *

**Kingdom Come – The Civil Wars**

Cecilia knew every hiding spot in the Games Center. She knew about the roof, where you could enjoy the illusion of freedom for a few moments.

She knew of that one closet that had no surveillance, where you could curl up among the linens and breathe in the scent of fabric and just have a few minutes of _peace._

That was how she'd won. She'd hidden, and waited until there were only three of them left. They she'd emerged from the destroyed city-scape and struck from nowhere.

But she doesn't know how to hide now. How to hide from what Snow is saying on the screen. How to hide from the look on Erasmus' face, or the scared questions of their children.

She can't hide from this. She can't run.

* * *

**Arms – Christina Perri**

When Finnick Odair was still just a child, he used to dream someday about having a family. A real family, to begin to fill up the nearly deserted Odair longhouse the way it should be. A family that was made up of more than ghosts and the shadows of what had been. To bring the smile back to his father's face and bring his brother home from the water-ways that trailed across Four like the strands of a net.

And then the Games happened.

And suddenly he wasn't a child anymore and he was living on the opposite coast from his family's longhouse.

And he knew there wouldn't be anyone who would want to make a family with him.

And then Andromache Cresta, Annie, happened.

She ignored him at first, and he barely noticed her. But he came home one day and found her in the kitchen with Mags, crying in her arms.

And she kept coming back, and they talked, and she knew and she didn't care.

(Well, that's not true, but she didn't care that way. She didn't despise him.)

She loved him. And he loved her.

And just maybe, they could save each other.

* * *

**Reviews? For my full request please see A/N on previous page.**

**Bob and I wish you happy holidays, since we are not quite within that point where I feel "Merry Christmas" to be appropriate. (If you don't celebrate Christmas, I am very much _not_ adverse to you wishing me "Happy Hanukkah/Kwanza/Whatever you _do_ celebrate" back.)**


	3. Chapter 3

**Welcome to the Black Parade by My Chemical Romance**

Johanna scratches at the "bark" on her tree-dress as she slunk up behind Finnick. "Hey, Pretty Boy."

"Johanna."

She rolled her eyes at his wink. "So. What's your impression of Panem's new golden girl?"

He shrugged. "She's…different."

"Well that's helpful." Jo grumbled all the way back to her own chariot, ignoring the disapproving looks of Eulalia Seems as she climbed in beside Blight. Time to relive old nightmares. It was hard to believe she had ever been as young as that.

Seven was right near the middle of the line and Jo got a good view of Twelve's entrance, both the kids smoldering like the embers of a forest fire that had not quite died. The girl…Jo could see what Finn meant. She stared straight ahead, her eyes angry and disdainful. Shame they are going to have to kill each other, Jo thinks she could get along with someone who hates people that much. Finn is a decent friend and all, but he's too _nice._

The roar of the crowd, cheering for them, their pretty costumes and deaths to come, drown out the individual words. The chariot pulls into formation and Jo settles in to spend the speech imagining her ax buried in Snow's face.  
The sad part is that she thinks she'd almost rather be down here, part of the death-show, rather than up in the stands among the wandering hands and proprietary eyes. Blight is her Capitol-mandated date for this event. This death march.

Screw them all.

* * *

**Fight Song by Rachel Platten**

Annie closed her eyes and breathed deep, the salt of the sea nearly disguising the salt of her tears. She doesn't want to do this alone. She's always had Mags and Finn and now she has neither. Her arms tighten around the swell of her belly and she breaths again.

Johanna is back at the house, bitching about the trouble she goes to for Crazy-Girl as if Annie can't see the concern in her eye. Katniss' mother is just as bad. They are afraid to let her out of their sight, like they are afraid she'll do something.  
She opens her eyes and stares into the sunset. They shouldn't worry. This is what they fought for. What Finn _died_ for. She is going to raise their child in a world where he will be free. She will teach him to swim and fish and he will never have to be afraid.

Because They are _not_ going to win.

Annie may be crazy, but she's a Victor and that means she's a _fighter._ After so long fighting to survive, she is ready to fight to _live._ She will never stop missing Finn, but she _is_ going to live in this world they fought so hard for and she is going to show them.

She is Andromache Odair and she is _free._

* * *

**The Ballad of Serenity (From "Firefly") by Dominik Hauser**

It doesn't matter what they do. They own out bodies and our minds, they kill the people we care about and burn our homes.

But there is always a part of us that they can't own. Not if we don't let them.

Our thoughts, our anger, and hate. All of these are ours and ours alone. Even if they know of them, they cannot control them, cannot own them. And most importantly, they cannot take them away.

They have taken away our homes and our freedom, but they haven't taken that. And someday, we will let them know it.

* * *

**Lullabye for a Stormy Night by Vienna Teng**

Cecelia brushed the hair back from Waft's forehead and dropped a kiss as Erasmus wrapped an arm around her waist and looked down over her shoulder. "They sleep so peacefully."

Cecelia hummed and held Neena close, watching her fingers open and close in her sleep, a little baby yawn cracking her face like a rip in the fabric. "They are too young to have learned to fear the dark and the storm." Their eldest is six, their youngest four months. It is six more years before Waft will be eligible for the reaping.

Her husband hugged her tightly, his breath rustling by her ear. "Or maybe they are too young to have forgotten that morning comes after the night is over and that the storm brings rain to heal."

"Maybe." She is reluctant to leave but Erasmus draws her carefully away.

"Come to bed Cece. They will still be here in the morning."

* * *

**Empty Chairs at Empty Tables by Eddie Redmayne from Les Miserables: The Motion Picture Soundtrack (Deluxe Edition)**

Haymitch drops into one of the chairs of the Four suite in the Tribute Center. Just sitting here brings back so many memories of meetings, formal and informal. This floor had been the unofficial meeting room of all the Victors, as fitted the place where Mags had lived.

Even now, with less than ten survivors, he can close his eyes and hear Chaff's boisterous laugh, Rosabel teasing Todd and Graham. Jo making fun of the latest fashions.

He remembers, as clear as if it were yesterday, the meeting they held the first night of the Quarter Quell events.

That was no idle meeting. They planned and plotted and laid the foundations for what would come to be The War.

The war that freed the Districts. The war that ended the Hunger Games.

The war that killed them.

Sheen and Wiress and Nora and Gemma and Argent and Blight and Cecelia and Marina and Lagan and Splice and Jessie and Ruth and Hippolyta and Seeder and Lyme and Woof and Liam and Rilis and Tollack and John-Luc and Agate and Millett and Ella and Finnick and so many others.

Gone.

And here he was. Alone with the ghosts.

* * *

**Raise Your Glass (Glee Cast Version)**

Cashmere threw herself onto the couch across from where Odair and Mason were sprawled out on top of each other.

"Lovely party, isn't it." She blinked her gold-dusted eye-lids at the younger Victors and was rewarded with a brilliant Odair grin and a sardonic salute from Mason's champagne flute. Odair is high on something. He has that look that comes from having just entertained a patron who likes the trippy stuff. Probably why Mason is practically sitting on him, to make sure he doesn't wander off where someone can get a freebie.

"Something like that." The other woman tossed back the alcohol in one gulp, grabbing another from a passing Avox. "They keep telling me I need to be a 'lady'."

Cashmere snorted and took one for herself. "Your angle isn't 'lady'."

Mason grins back in a way that looks far more like a "smile" from Enobaria. "I know."

* * *

**Now We Are Free by Lisa Gerrard**

The stars are bright points of light that echo from the sky to the sea and back again, the only illumination besides the bonfire Finn built just past the tide-line.  
Annie stands in the shallow water, her eyes closed and face upturned, letting the breeze in the beach-grass and the waves around her ankles sweep her up in their wild song, unrestrained and unconfined.

Finn takes her hand and spins her, the splash of their feet in the water echoed by the drums in her mind.

For now, these moments here, away from the rest of the world, they belong only to each other.


End file.
